The Branded and Gilded Life
The Branded and Gilded Life
The time-travel self portrait
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The time-travel self portrait

What if you could combine your current self with one from your childhood?

Or teen years.

Would it look like a father-son or a mother daughter picture?

Ard Gelinck does interesting things with celebrity portraits.

He merges their current look with a time difference of decades.

The effect is mesmerising.

While we see ourselves in the mirror each and every day, the gradual aging is never perceived - like a morph that happens in extreme slow motion.

Anyone with access to Photoshop or any image editing software could do it.

Take two pictures of the same person 20-30 years apart and combine them.

There's a sense of freezing time into a frame.

The celebrities that Ard Gelinck photoshopped were so happy with the effect, they shared it on their own Instagram stream.

The innovation is the natural interaction worked into two separate images.

Barack Obama jabs the cheek of the child he was ages ago

The adult Macaulay Culkin is almost unrecognisable as the young star of Home Alone.

Emma Watson from the Harry Potter films has grown into an assured and striking young woman.

This could be used to create a 'group' photo with the same person at various points in time in their life.

For once, time waits for man. Or women.


Maybe it's time to get back to handwriting

It seems regressive.

With teaching moving to smart boards and interactive lessons, handwriting has moved way down in the preferred list of teaching methods.

It probably needs to be prioritized.

In a study comparing students who learned a new language in 3 different ways - one set by handwriting, another set using typewriters and the third through video instructions, the students who wrote by hand outperformed the others.

Remember the time schools made students write copious notes of class lessons? On certain days, it would lead to cramps and stiff elbows.

But students were probably absorbing lessons better.

Thankfully writing is still an integral part of learning - and that should probably remain the norm.

But try getting children today to spend time practicing their handwriting and there will be huge resistance.

Typing, or even using voice to 'type' is so much easier.

One of the things we need to hardwire is that 'Easy come, easy go' applies to learning as well.

The work involved in learning a new subject or skill involves effort - and that should be underlined.

We're trying too hard to make learning 'easy' removing all the friction points in the fond hope that children will learn more if the process is made easier.

That's still a grey area. Because it's still not clear if interest alone will drive understanding.

How new concepts are absorbed and retained is still not understood. And that's where the focus should be.


The new game at Netflix

Netflix has got into gaming.

It’s another major move for the company that moved from CDs and DVDs to streaming to stay ahead of the market, not just the competition.

They started with video subscriptions in a market that made money out of late fees and destroyed the business of one of the most established players - Blockbuster.

Even after making a success of it, they moved into streaming technology and outgrew their existing model of mailing DVDs.

Within a few years, they scaled this across the world and built an entertainment colossus with over 200 million subscribers.

They spend billions on creating new content every year because the assets will continue to attract audiences far into the future.

As Reed Hastings once famously remarked - Sleep is their biggest competition.

So, this move should have been in the works for some years now.

Netflix has spent the past half-decade building a collection of exclusive TV series based on video game licenses, including animated series based on Castlevania, Dota 2 and a critically acclaimed, live-action version of The Witcher

The app to watch movies is already on millions of smartphones - all that's required is to give people the choice to play games as well.

And Netflix has confirmed the hire of an ex-EA and Oculus executive. Now, it remains to be seen if they can replicate or seamlessly move into a highly competitive category.


Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.

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